In a long anticipated announcement, Maxis finally announced that SimCity 3000 would be coming to the platform that the Sim titles started on, the Mac. SimCity is a simulation strategy game where one controls the development of a city down to the finest detail in an attempt to grow it into a huge thriving metropolis. SimCity 3000 is the most recent version of the game, though until now it has not officially been planned for the Mac. The company announced that the PC version has sold over 1 million copies and simultaneously announced that a Mac version was on the way. According to Maxis:

Electronic Arts also announced that it would release a Macintosh® version of SimCity 3000 this summer. The Macintosh version will run on systems with at least a 180MHz PowerPC® processor and 32MB of RAM. This includes the popular iMac(tm) and Power Macintosh® G3 systems. Like the PC version, SimCity 3000 for the Macintosh will carry an "E" (Everyone) ESRB rating and will have a suggested retail price of $49.95.

"We're extremely pleased with SimCity 3000's sales and the reaction from our customers," said Larry Probst, Electronic Art's chairman and chief executive officer. "With the addition of the upcoming Macintosh version and continued on-line support, we believe the game will enjoy an extremely long shelf life."

Since the release of SimCity 3000, Maxis has been extending the value of the game by providing a series of free add-ons and on-line support through the official SimCity(tm) Web site located at http://www.simcity.com. The most recent addition to SimCity.com has been the "City Exchange," a trading post where users can upload and download their favorite metropolises. Once uploaded, players can see if their cities rank in the best (or worst) in a number of areas including traffic, crime and pollution. Since the exchange was launched earlier this month, over 2,500 cities have been posted.

The most popular add-ons available from SimCity.com have been new landmark buildings for players to place in their cities and extra terrain maps on which players can build their cities. Maxis estimates that approximately half of the SimCity 3000 owners have downloaded at least one of the add-ons. The first landmark building pack, featuring three San Francisco area structures, has alone been downloaded by more than 200,000 players.

We are not sure what "this summer" means as far as a release date, but we will let you know as soon as we find out.

The Mac Observer Spin: Maxis has been so Mac unfriendly in the last few years. This is a shame since the Mac helped get the company off the ground. Like Intuit, the company decided that the Mac was not a platform worth developing for, but unlike Intuit, Maxis has come back. This is a good thing. The SimCity series has been enormously successful on the Mac and hopefully Maxis and their parent company Electronic Arts will profit handsomely on the Mac version of SimCity 3000. We would like to continue to see Mac versions of games come from both companies.